ICO fines company for sending spam texts

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined a company £100,000 for sending unsolicited spam texts attempting to solicit leads for financial services institutions. The ICO found that between May to December 2015, the company sent 1,132,149 unsolicited texts to individual subscribers for the purposes of direct marketing.

The government has recently transferred the function of maintaining, and of keeping the Telephone Preference Service and Fax Preference Service (the registers) up to date, from Ofcom to the ICO. This transfer will allow the ICO direct control over how the registers are maintained and direct access to the information they contain. As a result, it is hoped that complaints arising from nuisance calls and faxes will be dealt with more efficiently.